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Why High School Graduations Matter…

Graduations at the very least, represent our much-needed symbols of hope. Perhaps the period leading up to that graduation created an opportunity for a creative encounter with a word, idea, concept, picture, poem, essay, or novel; something that caused the graduate to examine their ‘interior-selves’, to the point that their intellectual, moral and spiritual literacy levels are irreversibly raised…

I love this time of the year because I am a total fan and praise-singer in support of graduations. As educators we cannot guarantee that every person who walks across the stage to receive a diploma, will go on to be a good and decent person. In fact we know in that historical period in Germany that gave birth to a vulgar culture of national fascism; Germany was a world learning leader in the study of the: arts, music, science, technology, philosophy, and yes even in theology.

And yet I still praise graduations, because I believe, without a doubt, and with absolutely no data to back it up; that our chances of producing morally good and psychologically healthy human beings increases, based on the ‘richness’ of the extent that a student encounters and engages with books and rigorous learning.

Like the graduated cylinder utilized in science lab experiments, graduations should measure our true level of competence and accomplishments, the accurate amount of skills and knowledge we have acquired, and are now prepared to pour into our next level of life-challenges…

Since my own high school American History days, this one idea has haunted and driven me: It was important to American slave holders and their enablers, that slaves not be allowed to learn how to read, or have access to books. So important that this prohibition was codified into laws. When evil seeks to retain power, people not knowing, not thinking, and more important, being taught to not want to think and know, become critical tools in the sustenance and maintenance of that evil power. It’s not that well-read and well-educated people can’t act badly (1940’s Germany and the 2016 US elections prove otherwise); it’s just a matter of efficiency. For the malevolent leader, ‘popular ignorance’ is much easier to work with, read: manipulate.

Graduation day should indicate our immunity to ‘stupidness’; announce our intellectual rejection of the simple solution to complex problems. Especially, when those ‘solutions’ limit themselves to a philosophy of malicious materialistic options that says ‘wining’ means that I must cause others to lose…

We are living in a time when “moral violence”, a bigoted belief system, and anti-compassionate ideas are in the position of national authority. That is a scary state of affairs that my high school World History course, and readings about Nazi Germany warned me about. Armed with those history studies, combined with my life changing readings of books like: “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” and Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”, caused me to think, as I walked across my high school auditorium stage in 1969; that I needed, wanted, no had to, do something to make the world a better place.

Graduations should signal our soon to become gift of service to humanity…

Education and books should force us not to seek comfort in the false safety of the baying for the ‘others’ blood mob. Schooling and reading should push-back against an emotional indifference that leads to not identifying with the pain and suffering of others. Education, at its best, will teach us to want to care for the dismissed, disenfranchised, and the despised, those who are not (but who really are very much) like us.

Graduation is the Cap (stone) of our earned ‘right of passage’ to now serve as caretakers of the planet and its people. It is also the Gown that covers our ‘regularness’, a sure sign of the elevation to our extraordinariness…

We must create morally intelligent schools, for both ethical and practical concerns. Those students denied an intellectually enriching school experience; who were never exposed to a values clarification and examination learning opportunity; the young people who grow into adulthood having never discovered or practiced their gifts and talents; will eventually wreck revengeful havoc on a collective elder-parenthood who abandoned them to invent their own cynical and nihilistic way and view of the world.

Receiving a high school diploma should say to the world, that the recipient has been significantly exposed to the best wisdom and knowledge of the elders and ancestors (Now what they do with that wisdom & knowledge is on them!); and that they have been prepared to successfully live a positive and productive adult life. That, is the sacred promise of the high school diploma…

My high school encounters with the short stories “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, and “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, suggested to my growing teenage sensibilities; that we can’t escape from our shared human called responsibility to not be selfish, callous and mean. For, as another of my high school English class novels taught me, none of us will ever find and enjoy “A Separate Peace” (by John Knowles) apart from our human family who is denied that same peace we covet.

High School graduations in large part should end our small self-centered childish thinking; what can I do next in preparing to give, not just take from my humanity family…

Ignorance feeds and inflames the political lynch mob, provides it with a twisted logic that says: “I can only become fully human, if I engage in the practice of the dehumanization of someone else”. Education should teach us that each dehumanizing act we inflict on another, will in fact further push us down a path where we will meet our emotionally disheveled, diminished and greatly dehumanized selves walking beside and inside of us.

The graduation ceremony marks the beginning of our hero’s journey (with less parental oversight), where we encounter and defeat the evil obstructions of our world, as well as finding our role for defending the world from the evil of a callous and practiced insensitivity that humans can sometimes descended into when we are afraid …

Graduations at the very least, represent our collective and much-needed symbols of hope. Perhaps the period leading up to that graduation created an opportunity for a creative encounter with a word, idea, concept, picture, poem, essay, or novel, something that caused the graduate to examine their ‘interior-selves’, to the point that their intellectual, moral and spiritual literacy levels are irreversibly raised.

Graduations should announce a dramatic shift in the expansion of our cultural spatial view and understanding of the world, along with our singularly unique special place in that world…

I am still going to hold out with hope, that reading, knowledge and learning are the ultimate antidotes to: ‘ugly thinking’, to human nullifying and exclusionary talk; to acts of hate motivated violence. And therefore every high school graduation is a sign, a possibility, a chance that my hope can still show up, and walk across the stage of life.

Michael A. Johnson has served as a public school teacher, Science Skills Center director, principal, and a school district superintendent. He also served as an adjunct professor of Science Education in the School of Education at St. John’s University. He recently completed a book on school leadership: Report to the Principal’s Office: Tools for Building Successful High School Administrative Leadership… http://reporttotheprincipalsoffice.net/